Sokyo offers modern Japanese dining

By Daisy Dumas
Updated August 6 2014 - 10:08am, first published August 3 2014 - 12:15am
Sophisticated: Sokyo offers savvy Japanese dining for all.
Sophisticated: Sokyo offers savvy Japanese dining for all.
Swish: Sokyo combines a look of Tokyo glam with plates of edible art.  Photo: Dominic Lorrimer/Getty Images
Swish: Sokyo combines a look of Tokyo glam with plates of edible art. Photo: Dominic Lorrimer/Getty Images

 

WHO
Laura Csortan, TV host and travel presenter, of the eastern suburbs

WHERE
Sokyo, The Star

WHY
"Sokyo is where I frequent the most because I’m a big fan of Japanese. It feels like a real outing - an occasion when you can get a little bit dressed up and go to the bright lights.

"The bar's got a bit of a New York feel to it and the food is second to none. I’ve eaten Japanese all round the world and it is up there - really fresh."

WHAT
"I love the kingfish with green chilli, the miso cod - or a version of - and the crunchy rice and tuna. There’s a beautiful beef dish, beef robata, and their salads are delicious as well. I can never leave without the dessert tasting plate. I’m not normally a sweet tooth but I find it complements the very savoury mains. It's not overbearing and heavy. And they do a pretty mean martini."

ABOUT
"At home I'm a very health-conscious cook. It's the opposite to what I like to do when I go out.

"I try to really balance my travel with eating well -  I try to make a point of 50/50 eating out and eating at home. I find cooking very grounding, it brings me back down to earth. Getting on to a healthy eating routine is the best jetlag remedy.

"Cooking is a really central part of my family life [Csortan is of Hungarian descent]. It's all about getting together and eating.

"I'm doing my Gypset Travel site at LauraCsortan.com. I'm really trying to build that up because it's something I'm really passionate about and I'm the travel expert for the Morning Show. I love Europe in the summertime - you can't go past Croatia, Italy and Greece."

 

The ratings: 

5 Royal flush

4 Four of a kind

3 Full house

2 House of cards

1 Joker

Sokyo, Level G, The Darling, The Star, 80 Pyrmont Street, Pyrmont; 9657 9161; star.com.au
3.5 out of 5 stars
Sashimi, tempura, robata $9-$60; mains $28-$130; desserts $9-$26. Dinner for two, $155 plus drinks.

MAIN

If Hatsune Miku, Japan’s chart-topping vocaloid pop star, was a human, she’d eat at Sokyo when she visits Sydney. Failing that, she’d drink at its bar. High on Tokyo glam, Star casino’s zhuzh factor is in overdrive here, giving it, as Csortan    put it, a sense of occasion.

The action at the sushi bar is better than watching eaters in low lighting, no matter how beautiful, so my view is on to sides of pink mottled flesh, cubes of crunchy fried rice and marbles of roe and their elegant, sharp transformation into precise, edible art.

It’s a pop music menu, rammed with crowd-pleasers and palatable doof-doof - fare that’s comfortable for those whose sense of sushi adventure extends no further than tuna and salmon. In one corner, an NRL player, in another a Japanese family with high chairs for the babies.

We take our TV presenter at her word and order from our smiling and brilliantly helpful waitress roughly as she decreed. Mound after crispy mound of kingfish miso ceviche, decked in crunchy potato and green chilli, leaves the sushi-making counter, where a team of no less than eight baseball-capped staff work, quietly and efficiently, blades glinting with each wipe clean. It’s a joy of a dish, ever-popular for its salty, fatty, sweet and clean moreishness. I could eat it five times over, no matter how galling that may be to the Jiro Ono school of authentic sushi purists.

Scallops, their dense flesh impeccably well-treated, can do no wrong. The modesty of our cloudy scallop tranches is protected, just about, with curls of fried garlic, the odd caper and glossy yuzu honey dressing. It is sublime - but then yuzu with just about anything does it for me.

Robata of mushroom is heavy on umami - meaty and smoky - but I miss some of the more traditional grilled Japanese dishes one might spot in a Tokyo izakaya. The miso cod is worth writing home about - Nobu Matsuhisa’s signature dish is famous with good reason and Sokyo’s version, dengakuMan, doesn’t come without its devotees. It is caramelly and slippery and (as it should be) slightly rude, proving the imbalance of pleasure that can come from a slab of fish flesh and a soy marinade. Sake and cocktails take their turn alongside a wine list that echoes the point of the place: safe and glitzy at once.

It’s sophisticated and grown-up but, like so much of what we all really love, this is a style of eating that might be as popular with the very young as with those who have some  money to spend. The playful textures, sugary marinades, melting flesh, crunchy glutin - I wish everyone could have a go. It is a wholeheartedly savvy if modern and a la mode approach to high-end Japanese dining.

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